The following descriptions of The
Center of the Triangle, The Apex of the Triangle and The Base
of the Triangle are by Peter H. Buck and were recorded in his book:
Vikings of the Sunrise, published by Frederick A. Stokes Company,
New York, 1938

Havai'i, fanaura's fenua.

Havai'i, the birthplace of
lands.

-
Tahitian Chant

THE CENTER OF THE TRIANGLE

The main body of the Polynesian
Expeditionary Force, following on the trail of the Manahune vanguard, moved
into the leeward islands of a volcanic group that lay on their eastward
course. Fate, fortune, and the urge of their own stout hearts had enabled
them to penetrate into the center of the widely spaced oceanic islands that,
centuries later, were to be termed Polynesia (the many islands) and so give
the name Polynesians to the descendants of the original discoverers and
settlers.

The settlement of this group of
islands in central Polynesia took place about the fifth century A.D. Over a
thousand years later, the credit for their discovery was given to a British
explorer named Wallace. The permanent geographical name was given by another
British explorer, James Cook, who named the whole group the Society Islands
after the Royal Society of London, under whose auspices he had made
observations on the transit of Venus, with Tahiti as his base. These
explorers of another race who came into the Pacific less than two centuries
ago have been honoured rightly, but the original discoverers of over a
thousand years before have forgotten through lack of written records.
Perhaps their descendants conferred upon them the highest possible honours
by promoting hem to the rank of gods. The Society Islands are divided into a
leeward and a windward group. The islands of the leeward group were named by
their first discoverers, but as time rolled on, new names were given. The
old classical names were used in legend and song, but the later names were
used in current speech and so were adopted by the European map-makers. The
ancient names of the principal islands of the leeward group are given here
with their modern equivalents in parentheses: Vavau (Porapora; European
version, Borabora), Uporu (Taha'a), Havai'i (Ra'iatea, and Huahine. Of the
windward group, Tahiti, the principal island, lies a little over a hundred
miles from Ra'iatea. Mo'orea, formerly known as Eimeo, is seven miles from
Tahiti, and a number of smaller islands complete the group.

Tahiti, because of its large
size and great fertility, came to support the largest population in the
Society Islands, and, in later times, the political power passed from its
original center in Havai'i to Tahiti. Still later, it became the seat of the
government for French Oceania, which includes not only the Society Islands,
but also the Marquesas, Tuamotu, Austral, and Gambier islands. It will be
more convenient to allude to the myths and legends of the group as Tahitian
than to use the longer term Society Islands. The headquarters of the
Polynesian main body was established in the largest island of the leeward
group, named Havai'i after an ancient homeland. From this center various
groups later dispersed to people other islands, taking with them a common
basic language, the same foodstuffs and animals, a common religion, and a
common cultural background of myth and tradition. Therefore all Polynesian
cultures, wherever found in the wide spaces of the Polynesian triangle have
common elements that can be traced back to a common period of reorganization
in central Polynesia.

One basic language prevails
throughout Polynesia. The vowels are consistently the same - a, e, i, o,
and u, pronounced as in French or German - and the consonants are
always followed by a vowel. Dialects have developed in various island groups
by changes in consonant sounds. R and v are used in central
and eastern Polynesia where l and v are used in western
Polynesia. In some dialects certain consonants are not fully sounded but are
represented or should be represented by an inverted comma over its place in
the word. In the Society Islands, k and ng were dropped; so
the name for the ancestral homeland, pronounced Havaiki in other dialects of
central Polynesia, is here pronounced Havai'i. In New Zealand, where w is
used instead of v, the ancient home is Hawaiki. In the Cook Islands, where h
is dropped, it is 'Avaiki. In the Hawaiian islands, where w is used and k
is dropped, the largest island of the group is named Hawai'i. In Samoa,
where s replaces h, v is preferred to w, and k is dropped, the
largest island is called Savai'i. The food plants, the domestic
animals, the raw materials and tools upon which Polynesian material culture
is built, were probably first developed and tested in the leeward Society
Islands and carried from there by explorers and settlers to other parts of
Polynesia.

We may imagine the wonder and the joy of those first voyagers
from Micronesia upon beholding the lofty hills, the wide valleys, the
running streams, and fertile soil of a large volcanic island after they and
their ancestors had for centuries scraped a meager existence from the
unfriendly sands of coral atolls. Their whole physical background was
miraculously changed. We may picture dimly the interest of the older people
as they explored the profusion of plants, recognizing familiar ones, naming
new species, and testing the useful value of woods, barks, and leaves. Here
was an abundance of wood for building houses and canoes, and barks to
furnish fiber for textiles and cordage. Most useful of all was the basaltic
rock, which is absent in coral atolls. Food in the atolls had been cooked in
earth ovens in which the heating agent had been pieces of coral rock and
tridacna shells that crumbled away after each cooking. The volcanic
islands provided basaltic stones which could be used over and over again and
so formed a permanent medium for cooking. Basalt provided material for adzes
and chisels that were vastly superior to those previously made from shell.
Countless possibilities opened out in the arts and crafts, and progress in
the development of new and improved techniques was rapid.

In the fertile soil of the rich
valleys, food plants were cultivated to support an increasing population.
All the food plants cultivated in Polynesia (except the sweet potato), and
the domesticated animals were brought to central Polynesia at an early
period from Samoa. The manner of their spread will be discussed later. The
increase of food supplies in a volcanic group materially assisted the great
cultural development that took place. An exuberant new life opened up in
central Polynesia, and new adjustments and progress took place, not only in
the arts and crafts but in social and religious matters. The senor families
and the most intelligent priests seem to have settled down in the Opoa
district of Havai'i, which became the cultural center of the group. A school
of learning was established, and, in the course of time, the school
systematized the scattered fragments of myth and history that had been
remembered by various voyagers from Micronesia. That systematization took
place locally is borne out by the fact that the myths and legends were
applied to the local area. The pattern established was ultimately carried by
later voyagers in varying degrees of completeness to the remote angles of
the Polynesian triangle. Tahitian mythology or theology, however, continued
to evolve, and the myths, as recorded for Tahiti by Teuira Henry from the
manuscripts of the Reverend Orsmond, include changes made after the
long-distance mariners had left the near homeland of Havai'i.

Ta'aroa, the Creator, was self-begotten, for he had
no father and no mother. He sat in a shell named Rumia, shaped like an egg,
for countless ages in endless space in which there was no sky, land, sea,
moon, nor stars. This was the period of continuous, countless darkness (po
tinitini) and thick impenetrable darkness (po ta'ota'o). At long
last Ta'aroa cracked the shell to hatch himself. He stood on the shell and
called in various directions, but no sound answered from the void. He
retired within Rumia into an inner shell termed Tumu-iti
(Lesser-foundation), where he lay torpid for a further untold period. At
last, he determined to act. He emerged and made the inner shell of Rumia
into a foundation for the rock and soil of the world, and the outer shell he
made into the dome of the sky which was low and confined. He breathed into
the rock foundation the essence of himself and personified it as Tumu-nui to
be the husband; likewise he personified the rock stratum as Paparaharaha to
be the wife. Both, however, refused to obey the command of Ta'aroa to
approach each other, for each had a fixed appointed place in the earth
structure from which they would not move. Then Ta'aroa created rocks, sand,
and earth. He conjured up Tu, the great craftsman, to help him in the task
of creation, and together they formed the myriad roots. The dome of Rumia
was raised on pillars, and thus space beneath was extended. The space was
termed atea and pervaded with a spirit personified as Atea. Land and
space were increased and the underworld was set apart. Forest trees and food
plants grew, and living things appeared on the land and in the sea. At the
back were the mountains, personified as Tu-mou'a, with land, springs, and
rivers. In front was the ocean and its rocks ruled by the ocean lord,
Tino-rua. Above was Atea (Space) and below as Rua (Abyss). The land was
Havai'i, the birthplace of other lands, gods, kings, and man.

Darkness brooded under the confined dome at Rumia.
The gods Tu, Atea, Uru, and others were created or conjured forth by Ta'aroa
in darkness. Later the stars and the winds were born. From Ta'aroa and Atea,
who figures in the early part of this mythological period as a female, the
god Tane was born as a viable mass without form. Skilled artisans were
called to shape Tane. They came in pairs, carrying their kits of stone tools
slung over their shoulders, but at the sight of the majesty of Atea, they
retired in fear. Then Atea herself assumed the task of shaping Tane, and
successively formed all the anatomical details associated with the human
body, including the boring of the external ear passages with a fine spiral
shell. After these many plastic operations, duly enumerated in myth, Tane
assumed perfect form and became the god of beauty (te atua o te purotu).
Ta'aroa exalted Tane in power, and he became the god of craftsmen. Another
of the major gods, Ro'o, was born of a cloud and became the colleague and
messenger of Tane. At a later period, Atea changed sex with Fa'ahotu to
become a male, the sex attributed to Atea in the myths of other islands.

The Tahitian myth of the creation of man is lacking
in detail. Ta'aroa with the aid of Tu, the great artisan, created Ti'i, the
first human being. The word rahu (to create) is used, but as one of
the names of Ti'i is given as Ti'i-ahu-one (Ti'i-mounded-from-earth) it is
apparent that he was formed from earth. He married the goddess Hina,
daughter of Te Fatu (Lord, Core) and Fa'ahotu (To-begin-to-form). The
children of Ti'i and Hina intermarried in the period of darkness with the
gods of that era. The children whom they conceived were the ancestors of the
high chiefs entitled to wear the red feather girdles denoting the highest
rank, but the children whom they simply conjured up became the progenitors
of the common people. In another version, Ti'i created a woman from earth at
Atiauru, took her to wife, and committed incest with his daughter to beget
the first man. Another story states that Ta'aroa married Hine-ah-one
(Earth-formed-maid) and produced Ti'i as the first man. The three versions
are mentioned because we will meet them later.

In this period of confined darkness was born the
famous Maui family of demigods. Ru had daughter, Ruahea, who married Hihi-ra
(Sun-ray) and gave birth to five sons, all named Maui with a qualifying
term, and a daughter, Hina. The last Maui was born prematurely and was cast
into the sea. The gods took pity on him and married him to maturity in a
coral cave beneath the ocean. He developed eight heads and hence was called
Maui-with-eight-heads (Maui-upo'o-varu). When he grew up he performed
miracles, but in the Tahitian version he is not associated with the
fishing-up of the islands, as he was in other groups. Many artisans were
employed to raise the sky and let light into the world, but all retired with
their kits of stone tools when they came before the dread face of Atea, the
God of the great Maui, made the first attempt to prop up the sky. He managed
to raise it onto the mountain peaks where it rested on the leaves of the
arrowroot, which consequently became flattened. but his physical efforts
made him hump-backed and so he desisted. The task was then attempted by
Tino-rua, Lord of the Ocean, but he also failed. Maui, under the name of
Maui-ti'iti'i, studied the problem and decided that the way to succeed was
to remove the pillars on which Rumia rested, to detach the tentacles of the
Great Octopus which were holding the sky, and to relax the grip of Atea who
held the earth. After trying in vain, Maui sought aid of Tane in the tenth
heaven. By means of shell cutting and boring instruments and great logs for
levers and props, Tane detached Atea and pushed him up on high. Thus light
came into the world, and the long night of Russia was ended. Tane then
employed Ra'i-tupua, who dwelt in the Milky Way, to restore order to
the upper spheres of heaven which had been dislocated by the raising of Atea
to his present position high above the world. The sun, moon, and stars were
set in their appointed places, and peace and order reigned above. In the
lower world, temples and houses were built, and man adjusted himself to an
environment which provided food on land and sea.

The land that had been established had been termed
Havai'i, and the Tahitian bards seem to have taken for granted that this
Hawai'i was the island now known as Ra'iatea. The ocean to the west of
Havai'i was termed the Sea-of-rank-odor, and the ocean to the east was the
Sea-of-the-moon. The births of new lands, conjured up as was Havai'i, are
described by the ancient poets as follows:

Let more land grow from Havai'i,

From Havai'i, the birthplace of lands.

The quickened spirit of the dawn rides

Upon the flying scud beyond restraining
bounds.

Bear thou on! Whence beats the drum?

It beats beyond in the western sea,

Where the sea boils and casts up Vavau;

Vavau, the first-born of the family,

With the fleet that strikes both ways.

Thus Vavau (Porapora), to the drumming of the surf,
emerged from the depths. Again, to the beating of the ocean drum, the
smaller islands of Tupai, Maurua (Maupiti), Mapiha'a (Lord Howe Island),
Putai (Scilly Island), and Papaiti (Bellingshausen) emerged in quick
succession from the deep. The bard then faced east and sang:

Bear thou on! Whence beats the drum?

It beats beyond in the eastern sea,

Where the drumming surf casts up
Huahine,

The land that reveres its chiefs,

The land set in the Sea-of-the-moon.

The towering seas cast up
Malao-iti, and then the sound of the drumming waves receded to Tuamotu,
Marquesas, Hawai'i, distant lands that at present do not concern us. The
family of islands forming the leeward group had been born around the
motherland of Havai'i. According to mythology, the windward group was
created after the religious center of Opoa had developed in Havai'i
(Ra'iatea) and 'Uporu (Taha'a) was filled by land. For an impending
ceremony, sacred restrictions were imposed at Opoa. No cock must crow, no
dog bark, and neither pig nor man must walk abroad. The wind ceased to blow,
and the sea became still. In the midst of this dread silence, a beautiful
girl named Tere-he stole secretly away to bathe in a river that ran near her
home. The gods punished the infringement of taboo by causing her to drown. A
giant eel swallowed her whole and became possessed by her spirit. The eel
became enraged and tore up the foundation of the land between Havai'i and
'Uporu. The loosened land floated away on the surface of the sea like a huge
fish. The head of the fish had been at Opoa and the tail extended to 'Uporu.
As it floated out toward the horizon, the gods did not interrupt their
sacred ritual at Opoa, but Tu, the great artisan of Ta'aroa, took charge of
the fish. He stood on its head, which is now Taiarapu, and guided its course
to the east and south to the horizon of a new sky. The fish was Tahiti-nui
(Great Tahiti) possessed by the soul of the maid, Tere-he. The first dorsal
fin of the fish stood up and formed the highest mountain of Orohena. The
second dorsal fin detached itself and fell over the steering paddle to
follow in the wake as Tahiti-iti (Little Tahiti). It became the island of
'Ai-meo, now called Mo'orfea. The great fish dropped off other fragments
which became the small islands of Meti'a and Te Tiaroa. The little fish also
dropped a fragment which became Mai'ao-iti. Thus Great Tahiti and the
smaller islands of the windward group were established from the land fish
which floated away from Havai'i, the mother of lands. Tu, having finished
his task as pilot, returned to the religious convention that was being held
by the gods at Opoa.

Study the map below, and you
will see how accurately myths have been based on geographical position. The
emergence of Tahiti from the gap between Ra'iatea and Taha'a does not
require such credence as the western theory that the moon emerged from the
Pacific Ocean. The head of the fish (Taiarapu) certainly points in the
direction in which the fish was piloted, and Mo'orea lies behind in its
wake. I have lived at Papeete (chief town of Tahiti), visited Taiarapu,
gazed across at the rugged skyline of Mo'orea, and come in and out on ocean
liners, but I never realized the relative positions of the individual units
composing the Society Islands until I restudied the map in the light of
Tahitian mythology. The myths were composed from the verbal logs of deep-sea
mariners, and the picture of the relative positions is as accurate as if the
bards had had a modern chart spread out before them. When the land of Tahiti
floated down to the present location, there were brave warriors upon it,
but, according to later traditions, there were no high chiefs of royal
lineage among them. When Tu returned to Havai'i, Tahiti was left without
gods, at least without the gods worshipped at Opoa. The early people of
Tahiti were termed Manahune and were governed by warrior chiefs called
fatu. Because the later chiefly families did not officially trace their
descent through them, the term manahune came to mean plebeian. Tahiti
was therefore termed Tahiti-manahune, Tahiti without royal chiefs and
without gods. Both high chiefs and gods have belittled the achievements of
the early people who made their creation possible.

Native legend states that the
land of Tahiti had been long standing; new generations were born in the
land, bananas ripened, mountain plantains matured, the crowing of cocks
resounded in the woods, dogs barked on the seashore, hogs' tusks turned
upward, 'ava plants developed their roots, taro plants blossomed, sugar cane
leaned forward, breadfruit fermented in the pits, and songs accompanying the
beating of bark cloth were heard in the land. In spite of this picture of
happy contentment, the warrior leaders were uneasy regarding the stability
of their fish. The fish that had swum from Hawai'i might swim elsewhere. The
warrior, Tafa'i, said that the sinews of the fish must be cut to render its
position permanent. A number of warriors, whose names were personifications
of varying moods of the ocean, hacked the land with their stone adzes but to
no avail. Tafai'i then called upon the gods of the sky, the sea, and the
moon to assist, but no god responded to his prayer. Tafa'i sailed south to
Pupua'i in the Austral Islands to seek aid of King Marere-nui. The king
asked what gods had assisted them in their efforts. Tafa'i replied, "None!
Tahiti-manahune stands there without gods." The king after reflection gave
Tafa'i a stone adz which bore the name of Te-pa-huru-nui-ma-te-vai-tau, and
with it the sinews of the fish Tahiti were effectively divided. Formerly a
chain of mountains extended throughout the length of Tahiti, but this was
severed with the magic adz, and the gap forms the present isthmus of Taravao
connecting the head, Taiarapu, with the body of the fish. The throat of the
fish had been cut and it became stable.

A time arrived when the gods of
Opoa in Havai'i came down on the westerly winds to Tahiti, and the people
fled in terror to the caves and ravines of the mountains. Like birds'
peckings were the morsels of food at that time. The gods settled first on
Mo'orea and then spread to Tautira in Tahiti, where their reign was
tyrannous. They demanded the heads of warrior men, and the people deserted
Tautira through fear of the gods. Nought remained but the birds. The people
begged the gods not to destroy them, and the gods harkened to their prayers.
The gods gradually spread throughout the land of Great Tahiti, and the
people returned to their homes, having no more fear. Temples were erected
and dedicated to them, and the people adjusted themselves to the new
theology. Myths and traditions have been freely quoted to give a picture of
the Tahitian method of narrating events that occurred so far back that they
have become clothed with the supernatural. If this form of literary style is
interpreted in the spirit and not in the letter, we may grasp the main order
of human events as they occurred in the dim past.

From the mythical account of the
origin of Tahiti, it is evident that the priests of Opoa imposed severe
religious restrictions upon the people. The silence imposed on cocks and
dogs, confinement on pigs and man, and stillness on the wind and sea are
indications of a tyrannous rule. The action of the maid Tere-he may be
interpreted as a rebellion by the Manahune against these restrictions. The
name Tere-he may be translated as Floating away through-sin, and it aptly
illustrates the Polynesian method of recording events by applying them as
proper names to persons who figure in the story. Her death by drowning and
the struggles of the sea eel imbued with her spirit indicate that reprisals
followed and an upheaval took place. As a result of the social upheaval, a
section of the warlike Manahune, who worshiped the god Tu, set out in their
canoes to seek a new home. The later historians admitted the association of
Tu with the Manahune by allowing Tu to pilot the fish, but they stole Tu by
returning him to Opoa, thus leaving the Manahune without gods. The fish that
broke away from Havai'i was not the island of Tahiti but the Manahune fleet
that conveyed the first inhabitants to Tahiti. Hence the first name of
Tahiti was Tahiti-Manahune, Tahiti-of-the-Manahune-people. The gods who
followed after were the people influenced by the priests of Opoa. They
established themselves on the nearest island of Mo'orea and afterwards on
the main island of Tahiti in the district of Tautira. They demanded the
heads of Manahune warriors, which statement may be accepted literally as
indicating that they killed many of the Manahune and conquered them.
Finally, peace was made and the vanquished accepted both the rule and the
gods of their conquerors.

So the priests and scholars at
Opoa pieced together broken records and scraps of myths to compose a Genesis
that would apply to their new home and oceanic environment. They deified the
leaders of early expeditions who, in the course of time, became major gods,
such as Ta'aroa, Tu, Tane, Ro'o, and others. As gods, they took part in the
creation of the sky dome, the earth foundation beneath it, and the things
that grew on land and in water. Man was connected with the gods through
genealogies, for, in truth, the gods had been human ancestors before they
were made divine. In addition to gods and demigods, certain natural
phenomena and evolutionary concepts were added to the pantheon in the
personifications of Atea (Space), Papa (Earth foundation), Te Tumu (Source,
Cause), and Fa'ahotu (To begin-to-form). The mediums of family gods
graduated into powerful priests, who composed appropriate invocations and a
richer ritual. They developed the architecture of the temple from a simple
pattern of a cleared space before a stone upright into a paved or graveled
courtyard before a raised stone platform. At Opoa, the great temple, or
marae, of Taputa-pu-atea was erected to the new god, 'Oro, the son of
Ta'aroa, and its fame spread far and wide. new temples were built in the
Society Islands, but, in order to acquire religious prestige, a stone from
Taputapu-atea had to be incorporated in the building. It was the leaven from
which new structures derived mana (power).

For years I had cherished the
wish to make a pilgrimage to Taputapu-atea. From Maori traditions, I knew
that some of my ancestors had come from Ra'iatea, and I felt that much of
our theology had emanated from Opoa and its chief temple. Fortunately,
during a Bishop Museum expedition to the Cook Islands in 1929, I found
myself on the northern atoll of Tongareva (Penrhyn), and my quickest means
of getting back to my base at Rarotonga was by way of the Society Islands.
Through the courtesy extended by the New Zealand Navy Department to
scientists in the field, I was picked up at Tongareva by H.M.S. Veronica
en route to Ra'iatea. As we steamed southeast, I could not help feeling what
a vast difference the centuries had made. Here we were on a steel-clad
British man-of-war, steering a course by compass, observing the sun at noon
with an accurate instrument, and plotting off the position on a chart with
all the islands accurately located. The number of miles per day could be
absolutely controlled, and we knew the hour that we would arrive at Ra'iatea.
The Manahune vanguard had sailed down this identical course centuries before
in wooden vessels made with shell tools, with matting sails and man power at
the paddles, no compass, no sextant, no chart, but a firm faith that they
would land somewhere.

"Porapora of the muffled
paddles" rose sheer from the sea before us, a magnificent sight to one who
had spent even a brief month on atoll islands. Farther on, Taha'a and
Ra'iatea towered into view, and beyond lay Huahine. Here before us, in the
Sea-of-rank-order and the Sea-of-the-moon, lay the great islands where
Polynesian history was made. We approached Ra'iatea, the ancient Havai'i,
and steamed through the capacious reef channel to tie up to a buoy in the
deep lagoon before the chief village of Utoroa. The Commander went ashore to
pay an official call, and I landed with him. I felt that I should reverently
pick up some of the sacred soil of Havai'i from the first footprint that I
made on stepping ashore. But it could not be done, for we landed on a modern
wharf with wooden buildings forming the background. The old world atmosphere
of Havai'i, the birthplace of lands, that I had been conjuring up in my
imagination, was rudely displaced by a modern French trading village. It was
all wrong. My melancholy musings were interrupted by a familiar voice.
Before me, with a welcoming smile, stood K. P. Emory, a member of the Bishop
Museum staff who was to conduct an expedition into the Tuamotu Archipelago
on a motor launch built at Tahiti. The boat had been completed and was being
tried out on a trip from Tahiti to Ra'iatea. It had been given the ancient
canoe name of Mahina-i-te-pua (The-crescent-wave-at-the-bow-that-bursts-into-foam-like-a-flower).
Emory had been told when I would arrive at Ra'iatea and said, "I have come
to give the boat a trial and take you to Taputapu-atea."

The people of Ra'iatea had gathered at Uturoa to
celebrate the French fete of the fall of the Bastille. In the evening,
various village groups competed in singing and acting out some historical or
legendary incident. One of these plays represented the origin of the
little cluster of stars known as Pipiri-ma (The-twin-stars-in-Scorpio). The
story goes that a selfish fisherman and his wife ate his catch of fish and
sent their two children supperless to bed. The two children, therefore, ran
away and ascended a mountain. Their parents pursued them. As the children
stood on the mountain peak, their parents besought them to return, but the
children refused. When the parents ascended the peak, the children sprang up
into the sky, where they became the stars Pipiri-ma. In the play, a rather
corpulent man and his wife sat beside a burning coconut leaf that
represented the cooking fire. The two children lying on the ground peeked
through their fingers at their parents going through the pantomime of eating
fish. Finally the parents lay down to sleep, and the two children crept
quietly away toward a high pole in the show ground that represented a
legendary mountain. At the foot of the mountain were two chairs fixed to
ropes which ran through pulleys at the top of the pole. The parents woke up
and, with exaggerated wailing, followed in pursuit. As they neared the
mountain, the two children were hauled up in the chairs and suspended in the
heavens. The corpulent father clasped the foot of the pole and besought the
children to come back. The two children produced electric torches and took
evident delight in flashing them down on the upturned face of their
remorseful father. The flashes of light from the modern electric torches
represented the twinkling rays of the star cluster, Pipiri-ma.

Next morning we sailed down the
lagoon to deserted Opoa. The old people who might have conjured back some of
the religious atmosphere were still at the fete at Uturoa. Taputapu-atea
stands on a low, wide cape bounded on wither side by beautiful bays. The
court of the temple was overgrown with weeds, but the altar (ahu),
141 feet long by 25 feet wide, bore witness to past grandeur. The stone
platform was walled with huge slabs of coral limestone imbedded in the
earth, and the enclosure was filled in with loose rock through which,
formerly, skulls were scattered or piled in recesses until the people had to
conceal them elsewhere from the acquisitive fingers of foreign vandals. Some
of the slabs rose twelve feet above the ground, some had fallen, revealing
an inner row of lower wall slabs which showed that a larger platform had
been built around and above a smaller structure. Thus modern decay revealed
the evidence of previous growth whereby the first temple of Feoro had become
Vai'otaha and finally had risen in size and importance to become the
international marae of Taputapu-atea. Near the temple was an upright stone
pillar, nine feet high, termed the White-rock-of-investiture (Te Papa-tea-ia-ruea).
Here the head of the4 royal line of Opoa, girdled with a red feather belt
and seated on his wooden seat of honor, was raised to the top of the pillar
as part of the ceremony of investiture. Close to the be4ach was another
marae on which the human sacrifices brought by canoe were laid to await
their turn in the temple ritual of Taputapu-atea.

We took pictures of speechless
tone and inanimate rock. I had made my pilgrimage to Taputapu-atea, but the
dead could not speak to me. It was sad to the verge of tears. I felt a
profo9und regret, a regret for - I knew not what. Was it for the beating of
the temple drums or the shouting of the populace as the king was raised on
high? Was it for the human sacrifices of olden times? It was for none of
these individually but for something at the back of them all, some living
spirit and divine courage that existed in ancient times and of which
Taputapu-atea was a mute symbol. It was something that we Polynesians have
lost and cannot find, something that we yearn for and cannot recreate. The
background in which that spirit was engendered has changed beyond recovery.
The bleak wind of oblivion had swept over Opoa. Foreign weeds grew over the
untended courtyard,* and stones had fallen from the sacred altar of
Taputapu-atea. The gods had long ago departed. To keep down the rising tide
of feeling, I said bruskly in the American vernacular, "Let's go."

THE APEX OF THE TRIANGLE

Go to the island of my
dreams and seek for a beautiful beach upon which the king may
dwell.

-Legend of Hotu-matua

King Hotu-matua dwelt in the
land of Marae-renga and he dreamed of an island with a beautiful beach that
lay over the eastern horizon. He sent men on a canoe named Oraora-miro to
locate a beach on his dream island. He followed in their wake in his great
double canoe, ninety feet long and six feet deep. One hull bore the name
Oteka and the other Oua. The king was accompanied by the master
craftsman, Tu-koihu, in another canoe. After many days' sail, the two
vessels sighted an island that Hotu-matua knew to be the island of his
dreams. As they approached the western end of the island, the two vessels
separated, the king to survey the south coast and Tu-koihu the north. The
king's ship sailed rapidly and paddles were piled to increase the speed. The
king's ship rounded the eastern end of the island without having seen the
beach for which he searched. On the north coast he saw the canoe of Tu-koihu
paddling in to a beach that he recognized as the beach of his dream. It
would never do for Tu-koihu to land before him, so he invoked his gods with
the magic words, "Ka hakamau te konekone" (Stay the paddling). The
paddles of Tukoihu's crew stayed motionless in the water, and the sea
seethed as the king's paddlers raced for the shore. The double prow of the
king's ship ran u on the sands of Anakena, and Hotu-matua stepped ashore
onto a beautiful beach fit for a king to dwell upon. And thus Hotumatua
added his name to the roll of famous navigators by discovering the eastern
outpost that forms the apex of the Polynesian triangle.

Easter Island is 1,500 miles
from Mangareva, 1,100 miles from Pitcairn, and 2,030 miles from South
America. Its greatest length is 13 miles and its area is 67 square miles. It
is a volcanic island with a dry, arid soil, no streams, and but slight
rainfall. Of a number of extinct craters, Rano Aroi rises to a height of
1,600 feet. The island was first sighed by the Dutch navigator, Roggeveen,
on Easter Sunday, 1722. At that time it was occupied by a people of
Polynesian stock speaking a Polynesian language. Later European voyagers,
including Gonzalez and Cook, stopped at Easter Island and brought with them
the diseases that decimated the populations of all Pacific Islands. In 1862,
Peruvians carried off large numbers of the Easter Islanders into slavery. Of
a remnant of 100 sent back after representation by the British and French
Governments, 85 died of smallpox at sea and the 15 who were landed spread
the disease throughout the island so that thousands died. A conservative
estimate of the population before European contact is from 3,000 to 4,000.
Fifteen years after the first depredations of the slavers, the population
had dwindled to 111, of whom but 26 were females. The census taken in 1934
gave the total population at 456.

A French adventurer named
Dutroux Bornier established himself on the island in 1870 and became so
obnoxious that the Catholic missionary and his flock fled to Mangareva. More
would have left but the schooner was crowded to the limit. Those who were
forced to remain behind finally disposed of the foreign tyrant in the only
suitable manner. The exiled inhabitants returned after the death of Bornier,
but one wonders how many of the one4 hundred and eleven survivors were
fitted to pass on the torch of knowledge to their descendants. No native
population has been subjected to such a succession of atrocities and
disintegrating influences as the people of Easter Island. It is no wonder
that their native culture was so wrecked that the records obtained from the
survivors are the poorest in all inhabited Polynesia. Unfortunately the
early missionaries to Easter Island hadn't sufficient vision or interest to
teach the native scholars to write down their history, legends, and customs.
The early European voyagers collected curios and wrote down what they saw
and often what they did not see. Behrens, who accompanied Roggeveen, stated
that the natives were so tall that the seamen could wlk upright between
their legs. He also saw pottery in a land where there was no clay. Paymaster
Thomson of the U.S.S. Mohican wrote of the material things he saw in 1886,
but even then it was too late to gather authentic information about ancient
manners and customs. Mrs. Routledge made a survey in 1914 and her
information about images, quarries, and platforms is valuable. Macmillarn
Brown visited later and his theory of a sunken archipelago has interested
many. The Franco-Belgian Expedition visited the island in 1834 and later Dr.
Alfred Metraux, a member of the expedition, worked up his field material at
Bishop Museum.

From the fragments we can
reconstruct but little of the native mythology. Atea and Papa, the primary
parents, have not been recorded. Tangaroa came to Easter Island in the form
of a seal with a human face and voice. The seal was killed but, though baked
for the necessary time in an earth oven, the seal refused to cook. Hence the
people inferred that Tangaroa must have been a chief of power. Tangaroa also
appears in the king's lineage with Rongo as his son. This scanty information
is significant as an echo from central Polynesia. Tane and Tu are absent
from the pantheon but Tu-koihu is an early ancestor. He was a skilled
artisan, which reminds us of the early functions of the god Tu in the
Tahitian tale of creation. Hiro, the famous voyager of central Polynesia,
occurs in an invocation for rain. The first line runs:

E te ua, matavai roa a Hiro e-

(O rain, long tear drops of
Hiro-)

Ruanuku, a well-known god, occurs in a
genealogy. Atua-metua is present in a creation chant. This name is
intriguing for it resembles Atu-motua, one of the early gods of
Mangareva. Though Atu (lord) and Atua (god) are different words, a
change may have taken place in Easter Island. The qualifying words
motua and metua are linguistic forms of the same word meaning
father. Atua-metua mated with Riri-tuna-rei and produced the niu.
The word niu is the widely spread name for coconut but, as there
were no coconuts on Easter Island, the name was applied locally to the
fruit of the miro. The word tuna in the compound name of
Riri-tuna-rei means eel, and it is evident that this fragment records a
memory of the well-known myth of the origin of the coconut from the head
of an eel. The principal god was Makemake. The name does not occur
elsewhere as the name of a powerful god, and Metraux thinks that it is a
local name substitution for the important Polynesian god Tane. This
theory is supported by the myth that Makemake created man on Easter
Island in a way similar to that used by Tane and Tiki to form the first
woman in other parts of Polynesia. Makemake procreated red flesh from a
calabash of water. He mounded up some earth and from it he formed three
males and one female. The process of mounding up earth is described in
the local dialect as popo i te one, in which one is the general
term for earth and popo is the local verb for heaping upo,
which in other dialects is ahu.

The Easter Island creation chant, first
recorded by Thomson in 1886 and checked over by Metraux with native
informants, follows the pattern of such chants in other parts of
Polynesia. Various couples are mated to produce plants, insects, birds,
fish, and other objects. As in the Marquesas, Mangarevea, and the
Tuamotu, Tiki, here called Tiki-te-batu (Tiki-the-lord), is mated with
different wives to produce numerous offspring. Among Tiki's wives was
Turua who gave birth to Ririkatea, a king and father of Hotu-matua, the
first king of Easter Island. By another wife named Hina-popoia (Hina-the-heaped-up),
Tiki produced a daughter, Hina-kauhara. In Hina-popoia we find a
possible memory of the first woman, known elsewhere as Hina-ahu-one
(Earth-formed-maid). Thus, from the wreck of local mythology, there
remain a few definite indications that the mythology of Easter Island
contained fundamental elements that originated in central Polynesia.

Makemake was responsible for the fertility
of food plants, fowls, and the paper mulberry from which cloth was
produced. When crops were planted, a skull representing Makemake was
placed in the ground and an incantation was offered, commencing, "Ka to
ma Haua, ma Makemake" (Plant for Haua, for Makemake). Makemake was
worshipped in the form of sea-birds, which may be interpreted as his
incarnation. His material symbol, a man with a bird's head, was carved
on the rocks at the Orongo village. Wooden images representing him were
carried at the feasts. Human sacrifices were made in his honour and the
material part was consumed by the priests. These various items conform
to a general Polynesian pattern, but the bird-headed man is an
expression of art influenced by local developments. Of the organized
forms of religious ritual we know little. Priests presided over birth
festivals, drove out disease demons, and regulated funeral ceremonies
for which they composed dirges. The priests were termed ivi-atua (people
of the god), which has an affinity with the Mangarevan term for priestly
chants. Human sacrifices were termed ika (fish), a widespread
Polynesian term which probably had its origin in an early period when
religious offerings consisted principally of fish. Sorcerers and
priestesses who claimed to be the medium of deceased relatives who had
something to communicate functioned much as in the religious systems of
other Polynesian islands. The spirits of the dead were called akuaku
and were represented by the carved wooden images termed moai
kava-kava with protruding ribs and sunken abdomens. The spirits were
stated to have introduced tattooing, turmeric dyes, and a variety of
yam, which they must have brought from the land of the dead away to the
westward. The Easter Islanders shared in the general Polynesian concept
of a spirit land, not as a place of reward or punishment but simply as a
land beyond the grave to which the undying souls of all men may return.

The traditional history is almost as poorly
transmitted as the mythology. Hotu-matua took up his residence at
Anakena and shortly after the landing his wife Vaikai-a-hiva gave birth
to a male child. Tu-koihu cut the navel cord of the child and conducted
the ritual whereby the royal halo (ata ariki) was produced around
the child's head to indicate its royal birth. He was named Tu-maheke and
through him descends the line of Easter Island kings. On the basis of
fragments of royal genealogies, Metraux had estimated that Hotu-matua
landed on the island in about 1150 A.D. As in other parts of Polynesia,
tribes developed with increase in population, taking names of ancestors
and living in definite districts of the island. The highest ranking
chief, who also had priestly functions, belonged to the senior line
descended from Hotu-matua. This tribe was named Miru and ranked above
the other tribes, enjoying certain special privileges. Intertribal wars
were frequent and the tale of the war between Long-ears and Short-ears
may indicate that there were two early groups of settlers; one group,
which pierced their ears and wore such heavy ornaments that their ears
were considerably elongated, coming from the Marquesas where heavy ear
ornaments were worn, and the other group which did not pierce their ears
coming from Mangareva. The Long-ears lived on the eastern end of the
island and were credited with making the stone images which have long
ears and the stone temple structures. The Short-ears lived on the
western part of the island and had the more fertile lands. The
Marquesans carved large stone images and built stone retaining walls,
whereas the Mangarevans did not. Conflict arose because the Short-ears
refused to carry stones to assist the Long-ears in erecting a temple. In
the war which followed, the Long-ears were said to be almost
exterminated. This may account for what appears to have the commencement
of knocking down the images from their platforms.

The fowl, which was the only domestic
animal known in Easter Island, may have come from the Marquesas where it
was present but not from Mangareva where it was absent. Because it was
the only domestic animal, the fowl received more attention and honour
than in any other part of Polynesia. Fowls became the mark of wealth,
and festivals were characterized by gifts and distributions of fowls. In
order to protect them from thieves, fowl houses of piled stones were
erected to house them at night. Stones were piled up against the
entrance and the sound of stones being moved served as an alarm to the
owner. Skulls with incised carvings, imbued with power by Makemake, were
placed in the fowl house to promote the egg-laying capacity of the
occupants. It may seem a long call from the domestic fowl to the sooty
tern, but both are birds and lay eggs. The sooty tern (manu tara)
comes to breed in large numbers in July or August off the southwestern
point formed by the crater of Rano-cao on three rocky islets, of which
the only one accessible to swimmers is Motu-nui. What commenced as an
ordinary food quest for eggs became an annual competition to obtain the
first egg of the season. The warriors (matatoa) of the dominant
tribe entered servants for the annual Derby, and members of defeated
tribes were not allowed to take part in the competition. The selected
servants swam over to Motu-nui and waited in caves for the migration of
the birds. The warriors and their families assembled on the lip of
Rano-kao that overlooked the course. Owing to the strong wind, they
built houses of stone for shelter at the village named Orongo, the
Place-of-listening. There they listened for the coming of the birds and
waited for the call of the successful servant who found the first egg.
While waiting they amused themselves with singing and feasting and
carved on the adjacent rocks figures with birds' heads and human bodies,
the symbol of Makemake, god of fowls and sea-birds. In time, rules and
ritual were developed about his annual competition which became the most
important social event on the island. The successful servant leaped onto
a rocky promontory and shouted across the water to his master, "Shave
your head. The egg is yours."

A sentry on watch in a cave below Orongo,
termed the Bird-listener (Hakaoorong-manu), heard the call and relayed
the message up to the waiting masters. The successful master was termed
the Bird-man (Tangata-manu). On reception of the egg, the people
escorted him to Mataveri, where a feast was held in his honour. After
that he went into seclusion for a year in a house at Rano-raraku. The
details of his functions and privileges are not known, but certain it is
that he was held in high honour and provided with food by the people
until the next annual Derby took place. The list of Bird-men was
memorized and transmitted like a line of kings. The bird cult is not
known elsewhere in Polynesia and is clearly a local development arising
out of peculiar local conditions. The important of the fowl as the sole
domesticated animal, the annual migration of the sooty tern to a near-by
islet to breed, the village of Orongo with its carved rocks overlooking
the course, and the development of the bird cult are all in a natural
sequence that could have occurred nowhere else but on Easter Island.

Easter Island has little fertile soil and no
forests with large trees to provide adequate raw material for houses and
canoes. Consequently the framework of houses was made of slender arched
poles, and houses were narrow, low, and long. In order not to waste
valuable inches, the poles were not stuck in the ground but rested in
holes carved out of stone blocks. These pitted curbstones, like the
elaborate bird cult, are unique on Easter Island, evolved locally due to
lack of timber. The canoes were poor and flimsy, but ten to twelve feet
long and formed of many small bits of wood sewn together. Even the
paddles were made of two pieces; a short, narrow blade with a separate
handle lashed to it. The two-piece paddle is unique for Polynesia, but
again the form of the canoe and paddle was a local adjustment forced
upon the people by the lack of material. Successive European voyagers
saw fewer and fewer canoes on Easter Island, not because of degradation
in the population, but because of constant decrease in the wood supply.
The people swam out to ships sometimes with a supporting float formed of
a comical bundle of bulrushes. Wood was at precious as gold in Europe or
jade in New Zealand. The minimum quantity was used for necessities, and
the surplus constituted wealth in the form of wooden breast ornaments,
dance implements, and carved tablets.

Macmillan Brown in his work on "Peoples and
Problems of the Pacific" condemned the arts and crafts of Easter Island
as being the most primitive in Polynesia. This is manifestly inaccurate
and unfair. Apparently he did not take into consideration the vast
importance of environment and its influence on all forms of material
culture. The feather headdresses of Easter Island compare favourably
with those of the Marquesas and Tahiti and are vastly superior to any
similar work in Samoa and Tonga. The bark cloth is remarkable, for the
shortcomings of the original material are overcome by quilting with
threads by means of a bone needle. The carving of wooden ornaments,
stone images, and the development of decorative techniques, such as the
representation of eyes by means of a shell ring with a black obsidian
pupil, are among the most remarkable in all Polynesia. Brown has
condemned the Easter Islanders for not making greater use of bone,
turtle shell, and obsidian to inlay their wood carvings, but neither did
the other great branches of the Polynesians. The most unfair criticism
is leveled at the implements, which are classed as childish.

The adz or toki is stated to be a blunt
round stone rarely ground to an edge or rubbed smooth. It is evident
that the critic was referring to the hand implements that were used to
shape the stone images in the rough. He totally disregarded the adzes
that were used in woodwork, which are better made then those of
Mangareva and Samoa. Some of them are well shaped but with a blunt edge
and they were probably used as hand adzes to finish off the stone images
after they had been taken from the quarry. The stone statues of Easter
Island have intrigue4d the imaginations of many, and a mystery has grown
up around them. Some have believed them to be the work of some extinct
race from a vanished continent. Yet the simple truth lies at the feet of
the statues. Large stone images were made in the Marquesas and Raivavae
and smaller ones in the Society Islands, Hawai'i, and New Zealand. The
Easter Islanders carried the memory of stone carving from the Marquesas
to their new home, where they developed a local pattern adapted to the
soft, easily worked volcanic tuff found in the extinct crater of
Rano-raraku. The images have high faces, long bodies, and arms but no
legs. They are really busts. Some were placed on stone platforms near
the coast and others were dotted about the landscape. Those on the
platforms had expanded bases to enable them to retain an erect position.
The others had peg-shaped bases for insertion in the ground.

The process of carving these statues may be
deduced by an examination of the unfinished forms still lying in the
quarry workshop in the crater of Rano-raraku. The figures were roughly
shaped with the face uppermost. Then the sides were undercut and
rounded, leaving a narrow ridge along the back to hold the statue in
position. Finally this flange was cut and the detached figure was hauled
to its site of erection. There the ridge along the back was trimmed off.
Near some figures in the quarry lie rough stone tools shaped from hard
modules in the tuff, apparently left by workmen when the image factory
went out of business. Macmillan Brown has proposed that the statues were
made in the image of their mysterious creators from a now submerged
land-strong, imperious men with shapely chins and scornful, pouting
lips. At this statement a physical anthropologist stands aghast; if the
Easter Island images resemble their sculptors, then the Marquesan images
with round, owlish eyes, noses with expanded wings, mouths stretching
the full width of the face, must represent their makers. What a
nightmare the image makers of Polynesia would present if they were
recalled from the spirit land and made to conform to the anatomy of
their creations!

The difficulty of transporting the images has
been adduced as an argument in favour of a large population coming from
elsewhere with ropes and mechanical appliances to move the images. The
present Easter Islanders were considered too weak and lazy to have had
ancestors who could do hard work. The Tongans, Hawaiians, Tahitians, and
Marquesans moved large masses of stone and set them in place with ropes,
wooden levers, skids, and props, and built up inclined planes of earth
and rock to accomplish their tasks. Brown's assumption that the images
could be moved only by thousands of slaves coming from an imaginary
archipelago is based chiefly on one image fifty feet high which was
never removed from the quarry. The average height of the images is ten
to fifteen feet and their weight between four and five tons. I doubt if
the images were heavier than the logs that the Maoris dragged from the
forest for their war canoes or for the one-piece ridgepoles of their
large meeting houses. United man-power can accomplish much, especially
when such public works were made the occasion for a festival, with
feasting according to Polynesian custom.

Originally the stone images may have
represented gods and deified ancestors but in the course of time they
became more truly an expression of art. The images with pegged bases
were never intended to be placed on the stone platforms of the temples
but were to be erected in the ground as secular objects to ornament the
landscape and mark the boundaries of districts and highways. Because the
images remaining in the quarry all have pegged bases, it would appear
that the orders for the platforms had been filled and that the people
had embarked on a scheme of highway decoration when war or contact with
white foreigners caused operations to cease forever. The stone temples
of Easter Island were built near the shore line as in other Polynesian
islands, and the theory that they were so placed to exercise a magical
influence in preventing the encroachment of the sea is untenable. A
stone retaining wall was built near the coast, and the inland side was
filled in with rock to form a sloping surface which was defined on the
inland side by a low curb, sometimes stepped. The middle section of the
retaining wall was higher than its wings and thus provided a raised
platform upon which a number of images facing inland were placed on flat
stone pedestals. Beyond the low inland curb a roughly paved area
represented the paved court of the maraes of other groups. The entire
enclosure was called ahu, a term used in central Polynesia to
designate the raised platform at the end of the marae court. Recesses or
vaults were provided in the mass of stone as tombs for the dead, a usage
not confined to Easter Island. Owing to the loss of religious
association and ritual, the ahu have come to be regarded as
cemeteries, which was a secondary function of the older structures.

The wooden tablets with rows of incised
characters have been the greatest problem in solving the so-called
mystery of Easter Island. Legend states that King Hotu-matua brought
sixty-seven tablets with him from the island of Marae-renga. It this is
so, the use of such tablets must have been well established in the land.
Cultural and mythical evidence seems to point to the Marquesas and
possibly to Mangareva as the lands of origin of the Easter Island
people, yet neither of these islands, nor indeed any Polynesian island,
retina a memory of such tablets. Did they come from some land beyond
Polynesia or were they evolved in Easter Island itself? Students of
Polynesia were startled to learn that characters similar to those on the
tablets had been found on seals excavated at Mohenjo Daro in the Indus
valley in India. A European investigator arranged in parallel columns
selected characters from the seals and from Easter Island tablets that
were similar or even identical. However, a careful analysis by Metraux
showed that certain motifs had been rendered more similar by inaccurate
drawing. In any event, the identity of characters would tend to raise
suspicion rather than to confirm a common origin. It had been
demonstrated time and again that figures do not remain identical during
prolonged transmission. Easter Island lies over 13,000 miles from
Mohenjo Daro, whose civilization is dated at 2000 B/C. How could these
characters survive the dangers of flood and field during a migration of
over 13,000 miles of space and through 3,000 years in time to arrive
unchanged in lonely Easter Island and leave no trace between, not even
in Marae-renga whence Hotu-matua was supposed to have brought the
tablets?

We cannot suppose that the tablets themselves
were brought from Mohenjo Daro, for the Easter Island tablets have a
boustrophedon arrangement, that is, alternate rows are upside down. Such
an arrangement has not been discovered in Mohenjo Daro. Also, the Easter
Island tablets are made of local or drift wood, the largest one being
made from the blade of an ash oar which must have drifted to Easter
Island in the early eighteenth century. Hence there is little doubt that
the tablets were carved in Easter Island itself long after the time of
Hotu-matua, but were attributed to him to give them the increased
antiquity that all Polynesians revere.

The tables of local wood are flat, oblong
pieces with rounded edges and are neatly cut in shallow parallel grooves
with distinct edges bounding them. Commencing with the lowest groove on
one surface, the carver worked from left to right, when he reached the
right end, he turned the tablet upside down in order to carve the second
row from left to right. Both surfaces of the tablet and even the side
edges are completely covered with rows of figures. As it is difficult to
understand how any written chants or records could so correspond to the
size of the tablet as to exactly fill it in every instance, it is
probable that the characters are purely pictorial and are not a form of
written language. The tablets were called kouhau, which, in
the dialects of Easter Island, Mangareva, and Marquesas, means a rod (kou)
of hibiscus wood (hau). In the Marquesas, bundles of hibiscus
rods were placed vertically at the corners of religious platforms as
part of the temple regalia. In Mangareva, the term kouhau was
applied to hibiscus rods that were used to beat time for certain ritual
songs and dances. From the use of the term kouhau in Easter
Island, it would seem that the art motifs were carved originally on a
staff of hibiscus and, if done along the length of the staff, it may
account for the technique assuming the form of long rows. Owing perhaps
to the need of lengths of wood for other purposes, the carving was
transferred from staves to shorter pieces of wood in the form of
tablets which retained the name kouhau.

The tables were used by scholars termed
rongorongo, who sang the old chants at various festivals. In
Mangareva, the learned men who chanted at festivals and during religious
ritual were also termed rongorongo. In the Marquesas, the
inspirational priest who chanted were termed o'ono, the
dialectical form of orongo. When the Easter Island rongorongo
chanted, they held a tablet in their hands and when, in later times, a
tablet was shown to an Easter Islander, he took it in his hands and
commenced chanting. The connection between chant and tablet seemed so
obvious that European observers never doubted but that the carved
figures on the tablets definitely represented the words of the chants
and were thus a form of writing. When Bishop Tepano Jaussen heard an
Easter Islander chant to one of the tablets, he wrote down the words
that were chanted to the various characters on the tablet. An analysis
of the written native text proved to be a brief naming of the individual
characters, some obvious and many doubtful. Though delivered as a chant,
the whole composition had no connected meaning and was obviously made up
on the spot to satisfy a white man's desire for a chanted ritual of the
characters on the tablet. Any Polynesian can improvise a chant. I have
improvised chants to lengthen out a recital for a European audience that
did not understand the language. Neither the Bishop's informant nor I
had any intention of deceiving, but we were both influenced by the
desire to please.

Judged from a Polynesian background, I would
suggest that the rongorongo chanters originally carved figures
representing Makemake and art motifs connected with the bird cult on
staves termed kouhau, which they held in their hands while they
exercised their duties. Later the motifs were inscribed on wooden
tablets, and the natural desire not to waste any space led to the
tablets being completely covered. Again to make the most of the
material, the tablet was adzed or chiseled in contiguous grooves to form
ordered rows for the carving. The normal technique of working from left
to right and the desire to commence the first figure in a new line close
to the last figure in the previous line led to the boustrophedon
arrangement of successive rows. The artistic tendency to avoid
monotonous repetition of a few figures led to variations of the main
motifs derived from the bird cult and the addition of new figures that
were regarded purely as art motifs. The tablets became works of art and,
as valuable possessions, they were given individual proper names in the
same manner as jade ornaments in New Zealand. The Easter Islanders, like
other Polynesians, learned their chants and lineages by heart. They held
the tablets in their hands as symbols replacing the orator's staff.

The Easter Islanders have been badly treated by
popular writers. Erroneous assertions have been piled up one after
another to make their arts and crafts appear so poor and futile that the
task of making the stone images and of transporting them would appear to
be beyond the capacity of the ancestors of the present people. The
mystery has been deepened by regarding the art tablets as a form of
script and so foreign to Polynesian culture. Because western people are
now incapable of making stone images without steel tools and of
transporting them without modern ;machinery, the very culture of the
Easter Islanders has been attributed to a mythical people who never
existed. Yet the fact remains that the descendants of Hotu-matua used
the raw material of their little island to an extent that the western
mind seems to find difficulty in realizing. The resurrection of an
extinct civilization from a sunken continent to do what the Easter
Islanders accomplished unaided is surely the greatest compliment ever
paid to an efficient stone-age people.

THE HUB OF POLYNESIA

They sailed east to Mangareva, south of
the parrakeet islands, west to Samoa, and north to burning Vaihi.

- Tahitian Legend

Havai'i, the mother of lands, became the hub of
the Polynesian universe. The daring mariners who had steered their ships
through the unpierced horizon into the heart of the Pacific received the
highest honour from their descendants by being elevated to the rank of gods.
The priest at Opoa gathered the warp of myth and the weft of history
together and wove them into the textile of theology. The male parents of the
gods were Atea (Space) or Te Tumu (Source), and their mothers were Papa
(Earth foundation) or Fa'ahotu (To-cause-to-take-form). Their children were
given rule over special departments: Tane, forestry and craftsmanship; Tu,
war; Ro'o, peace and agriculture, Ta'aroa, marine affairs and fishing; and
Ra'a, meteorology. However, there is evidence that Tane had the greatest
sphere of influence. He was given the special function of forming the first
female out of earth and procreating the first human beings. In the course of
time, various islands of the Society group tended to pay deference to
different gods. The general pattern of Sky-father and an Earth-mother with
their deified children ruling over various departments of life was carried
abroad by adventurers who navigated their ships over new horizons to reach
the remote bounds of Polynesia. The marginal areas have retained the main
principles of the early theology and so enabled the descendants of a later
ago to envisage the early pattern.

After the pattern had been carried to distant
islands, the priests of Opoa elevated Ta'aroa above his brothers and made
him creator of all things, not only of his brother gods and men, but of
natural phenomena that had existed before he came into being. I cannot help
thinking that the highest ranking chief and his priestly advisors belongs to
a lineage tracing descent directly from Ta'aroa, and hence their selection
of this particular god for promotion. The rising power of Ta'aroa permeated
to some of the near-by islands of the Cook group and the Tuamotu and,
perhaps, Mangareva, but no farther. In the far lands of New Zealand and
Hawai'i he remained in his original place. The priests at Opoa elaborated
their theology still further when they created 'Oro as the son of Ta'aroa.
this new god was established as the supreme deity in the great temple named
Taputapu-atea. Ta'aroa was then retired and ceased to take an active part in
the mundane affairs of men. In order to spread their new cult in Tahiti, the
astute priests of Opoa organized the 'Arioi Society of strolling players,
who took 'Oro as their tutelary deity. This unique organization has been
regarded as a secret society having a possible affinity with Melanesian
secret societies. However, there was nothing secret about the 'Arioi; they
performed in the open and in public halls to which both men and women were
admitted. It has been assumed that the 'Arioi was an institution for birth
control because the female members were not supposed to have children and
were forced to kill those they had. European actresses cannot afford to have
children if they are to fulfil their engagements. Similarly, the Tahitian
actresses were frowned upon if they were unable to appear on the stage, and,
when their methods of prevention failed, they destroyed their infants.

That the 'Arioi Society was a powerful means of
spreading propaganda and winning support for the new cult may be seen by
analogy with the methods of certain Maori sects usually associated with some
form of faith healing or herbal treatment. At the back of all these sects
was the idea of mana (power) possessed by the leader through being
the medium of a defunct ancestor. The leader and a band of followers,
including good singers and dancers, travelled from village to village, not
only to cure and win supporters, but to receive entertainment and rewards.
The performances sponsored by members of the sect brought people into the
fold more readily than would any other form of propaganda. The 'Arioi
Society, like these, was founded on an appreciation of Polynesian
psychology. However, the people of Tahiti were not to be easily proselytized
again. They persisted in adhering to their own god Tane, and a violent war
broke out between 'Oro and Tane. In the end, 'Oro conquered Tane and
ultimately became the principal god of all the Society Islands. A new
temple, named Taputapu-atea after the temple of Opoa, was built in Tahiti as
the center of the new theology. That 'Oro was a late creation is amply
proved by the fact that he is unknown in the marginal areas of Polynesia,
even as a son of Ta'aroa. The Rarotongans, however, had some faint knowledge
of what had been happening Opoa for, when the missionary John Williams
arrived in Rarotonga from Ra'iatea in 1823, he was asked if Koro ('Oro) was
in power. Some of the faithful followers of Tane, who refused to accept 'Oro,
left Tahiti and settled in the outer fringe of the Cook Islands. Thus in the
Pacific, as well as in the Atlantic religious intolerance played its part in
causing the settlement of new lands.

Let us leave the priests and their intrigues on
land and get back to the smack of the salt tea spray. The deified ancestors
were succeeded by demigods, among whom are Maui and Ru. Maui we have met
before and shall meet again on the various sea trails that radiate out from
the center. Ru as a navigator may be Ru who assisted in propping up the sky.
He appears in Tahitian legends and chants as a deep-sea mariner who guided
his ship Te Apori to the leeward islands of the Society group. His
sister Hina, perched in the swinging bow above the foaming waves, peered
into the lifting horizon. Ru, feeling that land was near, sang to his ship:

I am guiding thee,

I am drawing thee to
land,

O my ship, The Apori.

Hina, the lookout, called, "O Ru, what land is
this rising upon the horizon?" Ru replied, "It is Maurua, which will be
great forever." Maurua (Maupiti) is a small island to the west of Vavau (Porapora).

Soon Hina sighted another island, and Ru sang:

It is Porapora; let
its watchword be -

Porapora the great,
the first-born,

Porapora with the
fleet that strikes both ways,

Porapora of the
silent, muffled paddles,

Porapora of the pink
leaf,

Porapora, the
destroyer of fleets.

Porapora was the first large volcanic island
sighted on a southeast course from the Gilberts and hence earned the name of
"the first-born." In later times, its inhabitants raided the neighbouring
islands in silent night attacks with their paddles muffled with bark cloth.
In the period of Ru, the island bore the ancient name of Vavau, and it is
evident that the poet has grouped later happenings around an earlier hero to
enrich his composition.

Again Hina called and Ru, the deep-sea poet,
rang:

It is Havai'i; let
its watchword be -

Havai'i that rises
in exceeding glory,

Havai'i, ever ready
to defend its honour.

Let us leave Ru at Havai'i and pass from the
demigods to the heroes. The heroes belong to the period when central
Polynesia was definitely settled and the priests at Opoa were weaving the
first pattern of Polynesian theology. They are more human because they
belong to a alter period and, though miraculous elements still enshroud
them, they were not deified. The heroes were deep-sea mariners who began to
explore the horizons beyond central Polynesia. The great explorers of the
heroic period are included in the cycle of the four generations of Hema,
Tafa'i, Vahieroa, and Rata. Space does not permit of our dealing with more
than one and, as Rata has already been mentioned in connection with canoe
building, let us take the Tahitian account of his great voyage and the
incidents that led up to it. In north Tahiti there lived King Tumu-nui,
whose sister Mamae-a-rohi married Vahieroa and gave birth to a son named
Rata. Tumu-nui had a daughter who married Tu-i-hiti, a chief who came
from the distant land of Hiti-au-rereva, away to the east. In due course,
Tu-i-hiti fitted up his ship Kare-roa and, with his wife, returned to his
own land. Tumu-nui felt the loss of his daughter deeply and decided to visit
her in order to persuade her to return to Tahiti with her husband. He built
a voyaging ship named Matie-roa and a canoe named Matie-poto.
After appointing his brother 'Iore-roa regent, he sailed for the east with
picked crews.

It is but natural that the deep-sea mariners of
the time should have recounted to wondering audiences the many difficulties
encountered on their voyages and that native story tellers should have
personified them into monsters imbued with magic power. The monsters
encountered on the distant seas to the east were eight in number:

1. Pu'a-tu-tahi

2. Ahifa-tu-moana

3. 'Are-mata-roroa

4. 'Are-mate-popoto

5. 'Anae-moe-oho

6. Tupe-'i'o-ahu

7. 'Otu'u-ha'amana-a-Ta'aroa

8.
Pahua-nui-api-ta'a-i-te-ra'i

Isolated-coral-rock.

Sea-monster.

Long-wave.

Short-wave.

Fish-shoal.

Animal-with-burning-flesh.

Crane-empowered-by-Ta'aroa.

Giant-tridacna-opening-on-the-horizon.

Tumu-nui, having performed his
religious duties correctly as a protection against the various dangers, had
supreme confidence in himself. He encountered Coral-rock, Sea-monster,
Long-wave, and Short-wave successively in the day-time, and his gods, in
answer to his appeals, rendered each of these enemies inert. On a cloudy
night, however, he sailed into the open valves of the Giant-tridacna, and
both ship and canoe were swallowed by the monster. Their fate was made known
to the people of Tahiti by the gods. The regent 'Iore-roa decided to recover
the bones of his brother and built a ship Tumu-nui-mate and canoe
Mei'a-roa for the voyage. Accompanied by Vahieroa, father of Rata, and a
picked crew of brave men, he sailed forth. He had sacrificed a pit to his
god and, as he was challenged successively by Coral-rock and Sea-monster,
Long-wave, Short-wave, Fish-shoal, and Crane-of-Ta'aroa, he told them that
their inimical powers, both above and below, had been overcome by his
sacrifice of a pig. Coral-rock and Sea-monster let the ships pass safely,
Long-wave and Short-wave subsided beneath their bows, Fish-shoal turned
aside, and Crane-of-Ta'aroa few out of sight. The Giant-tridacna was next
encountered and the ship was drawn by suction toward its gaping valves.
'Iore-roa defied the Giant-tridacna too late to stay the way on his ship,
and the vessel disappeared into the interior. The canoe Mei'a-roa had
fallen behind and so escaped to tell the tale of disaster in Tahiti.

The three remaining brothers,
'Iore-poto, 'Iore-mumu, and 'Iore-vava
successively built ships and sailed forth to avenge the deaths of the king,
the regent, and their crews, but all were swallowed by the Giant-tidacna.
Rata thus became king of Tahiti but his mother, Maemae-a-rohi, served as
rent and issued the edict, "Tread the earth, cultivate food, let people grow
fat, and take care of your offspring that they may replace those who sleep
on the pathways of the sea." The people prospered and Rata grew to giant
stature. The Queen Regent decided that the time had arrived for her to
retire in favour of her son. A feast was held and a wild boar hunt was
organized to celebrate the assumption of power by the young king. The regent
urged upon her son the necessity of remaining strictly neutral during the
competition between the two parties, each composed of two of the four
districts that comprised his kingdom. Rata, however, became excited and,
dashing into the hunt on the side of one party, struck down competitors of
the other side who got in his way. His strength was so great that some were
killed and others badly injured. The sport ended on a tragic note. His
mother bitterly upbraided Rata for killing his own subjects and, in spite of
his shame and t4ears, she decided to go with her sister to the far land of
Hitlau-rereva to visit her sister's daughter. The great double canoe
Tahiri-a-varovaro-i-te-ra'i was launched and set sail through the long
chain of atolls of the Tuamotu Archipelago. The crew evidently steered a
course that avoided the monsters of the sea, for the canoe arrived safely at
Hiti-au-rereva.

Rata, by his deep contrition,
regained the favour of his people. He determined to recover the bones of the
dead from the bowels of the Giant-tridacna. His artisans told him that the
finest trees in the lowlands had been used for the previous ships and that
he must seek suitable timber in the uplands. It was this scarcity that led
Rata to trespass on the territory of the elves of the upper woodlands, the
cliffs, and the mountain mists. Certain details of the adventures which
befell him have been described in Chapter IV. The fairy artisans who
directed the building of Rata's ship were Tuoi-papapapa and Feufeu. On the
completion of the ship, they made an offering of sennit braid to Ta'aroa,
and the god responded by sending a shower of rain for the ceremony of making
the new ship drink water. The ship was named Fa'a-i-ama and, with the elves
aboard, it was wafted by the mountain breeze into the air and deposited
gently on the surface of the sea. Rata, early awakened by dreams of the
promised ship, went down to the seashore. The rising sun threw a magnificent
rainbow on the clouds facing him, and his magic ship under full sail
appeared below the middle of the arch. Manned by its invisible crew, it
sailed proudly into the waiting lagoon, furled its matting sails, and
dropped anchor to await its human owner.

With such a ship, success was
assured. Rata manned it with picked warriors and, before he sailed, made the
necessary offerings of fish and coral rock on the altar of the gods of the
land. Long strips of bark cloth were cast on the ocean billows to placate
the gods of the sea, and large sharks immediately appeared to convey marine
approbation. A skilled pilot took the steering paddle. He was termed the
hoa pahi, friend of the ship, an apt term, for it was through his
knowledge that the shi successfully avoided treacherous reefs and surmounted
to9wering seas. The voyage went well until the pilot called, "Behold! there
is the Giant-tridacna." It was a fearsome sight. The upper valve arched high
over the horizon and, above the submerged lower valve, the purple fringe of
the huge mollusk waved up and down on the surface of the rippling sea in
dreadful expectancy. Nothing daunted, Rata and his armed warriors stood
erect on the bow, for the sea trail had led them to the end of their quest.

As the ship glided over the edge
of the lower valve, the purple fringe, like monster tentacles, undulated
forward and lapped against the sides of the vessel. The shining inner
surface of the upper valve, with its indented edge like huge teeth, loomed
above them, poised for the downward plunge. Before it could fall, however,
Rata and his men with one accord drove their spears below the purple fringe
and along the inner surface of the lower valve toward the hinge; they
completely severed the great muscle that held together the upper and the
lower valves. The huge upper valve that towered above the mast of the ship
remained poised on its locked hinge, motionless and impotent. the body of
the Giant-tridacna was but open and in the interior were found the
undigested bones of Tumu-nui and those who had followed after him. In
addition, there were found the bodies of Rata's mother and her crew who,
returning to Tahiti from Hiti-au-rereva, had been swallowed by the
Giant-tridacna but a few hours before. Their bodies were still warm, and the
priests with the aid of the god Ta'aroa restored them to life. Thus the
living and the dead met between the now impotent valves of the
Giant-tridacna. The bones of the dead and the bodies of the living were
transferred to Rata's ship, which stood off while the warriors with their
spears pried the base of the great bivalve from its coral pedestal. With a
gurgling sound, the lifeless Giant-tridacna. The bones of the dead and the
bodies of the living were transferred to Rata's ship, which stood off while
the warriors with their spears pried the base of the great bivalve from its
coral pedestal. With a gurgling sound, the lifeless Giant-tridacna sank to
the bottom of the ocean, nevermore to menace the voyagers who sailed the
eastern seas.

Rata returned to Tahiti, where
he restored his mother to her people and the bones of the dead to their
weeping relatives. He then set out to rid the seas of the remaining enemies
of deep-sea mariners. He slew the Sea-monster that had its base at the
Coral-rock, and the Coral-rock, robbed of its mate, became innocuous. Next
he killed the Animal-with-burning-flesh and the Fish-shoal. when the
Crane-empowered-by-Ta'aroa, which was inimical only to evil people, flew
over Rata's ship, it greeted him kindly and flew to a quiet lagoon to be
seen no more. The Long-wave and the Short-wave are essential dangers of the
great ocean, and they remain alive today to test seamanship. Coming back to
land, we must mention the development that had been taking place in social
organization. In Polynesian society, the family was ruled by the senor male,
who was succeeded by his eldest son. As the family extended into a wider
group of kinsmen, the senior family head became a chief of increasing power
according to the number of men he could control in peace of war. The
extended family groups developed into tribes which claimed descent from
early ancestors. History, prestige, and social ceremony developed around
chiefs descended from the tribal ancestors. The ruling family at Opoa
claimed seniority above all others in the Society Islands, and their claim
was admitted. Ritual was built around them as around the gods. Human
sacrifices were offered to the god 'Oro, and human sacrifices were demanded
for the chiefs on birth and through the varying periods of youth until they
were invested with the famous red feather belt at the temple of
Taputapu-atea. The red feathers of the parrakeet became the symbol of high
chiefs and the of the gods. Wooden images that represented the gods were
abandoned in the course of time to sorcerers and were replaced by wood
beautifully encased in twined coconut fiber. These were decorated with
hanging cords of coconut fiber to the ends of which were attached red
feathers. The symbol of the gr3eat 'Oro rests unrespected in the British
Museum. It is beautiful example of technique but it is dead spiritually, for
the red fathers which symbolized the divinity of 'Oro have long since
disappeared. The royal family of Porapora wore girdles of yellow feathers to
denote that their line was junior to the royal house of Ra'atea. Through
intermarriage both forms of girdle spread to the chiefly houses of Tahiti.
with greater fertile lands and a greater population, Tahiti became
increasingly powerful. It acquired prestige, and the poets changed its name
from Plebeian Tahiti to Tahiti-nui-mare'are'a,
Great-Tahiti-of-the-golden-haze.

Coincident with the development
and progress in theology and social organization, the arts and crafts
expanded. The development of shipbuilding has been described in Chapter IV.
The voyagers who succeeded Rata made tales of their discoveries, but with
the sailing directions by which the new lands might be reached. The
explorers followed a star over a new horizon, but ever they looked back at
the stars over the homeland and, when winds were favourable, returned to the
center from which they had set forth. Among the voyagers of the later period
were Hono'ura and Hiro. Hiro was born in Havai'i but was brought up in
Tahiti, whither he was sent to be educated by his maternal grandfather, Ana.
He was too young to be admitted immediately to the school, but his thirst
for knowledge was so great that he climbed on the roof of the schoolhouse
and learned all that his grandfather taught below. Apart from his adventures
at sea, Hiro was said to be the first to make his adventures at sea, Hiro
was said to be the first to make a ship constructed of planks instead of the
usual dug out hull.

The tales of discovery led to
the peopling of the nearer islands and for a time communication was
maintained between the new colonies and Havai'i. Teuira Henry states that
the various colonies were grouped into two divisions termed the Ao-tea
(Light-world) and Ao-uri (Dark-world), and each division had a high priest
termed respectively Pa'oa-tea and Pa'oa-uri. The two divisions formed the
Friendly Alliance, and representatives from the different islands came to
Opoa with offerings to the gods on the temple of Taputapu-atea. The great
drum used in the temple ritual was named Ta'i-moana (Sound-at-sea). During a
convention, an altercation arose in which both the high priests were killed.
The people returned home in disorder and the connection of the outlying
colonies with the homeland ended. A memory of the Friendly Alliance is
retained in Rarotonga for, when John Williams visited that island from
Ra'iatea, he was asked why the Ra'iateans had killed the high priest,
Pa'oa-tea, and what had become of the great drum, Tangi-moana (Ta'i-moana).

At some time following the
period of discovery of lands within Polynesia, there occurred a dispersal
from the central hub to permanently occupy the new lands. The dispersal was
probably caused by conflict due to increasing population with the inevitable
striving after power in the homeland. Organized expeditions were headed by
junior members of chiefly families who saw no chance of advancement at home.
Because of their social prestige they were able to have voyaging ships built
and to command adventurous crews to man their vessels. They were accompanied
by priests skilled not only in navigation but versed in the traditional lore
that had been developed up to the time of departure. From our knowledge of
the theology and traditional lore of the far-away colonies, such as Hawaii
and New Zealand, we know that they left after the first pattern of theology
had been evolved at Opoa and after the tales of Hema, Tafa'i, Vahieroa, and
Rata had been incorporated in the traditions of the homeland.

The period of greatest
colonizing activity probably extended from the twelfth to the fourteenth
century. Settlement was by a process of infiltration by individual canoes
arriving at different times and not by a migration of large numbers at one
time. It is certain that the Marquesas was settled at an early period, for
it became a secondary center for distribution from which adventurers set out
to the east and colonized Mangareva and Easter Island. It is probable that
the Marquesas was also used as a place of call by some, at least, of the
colonists who made their way north to Hawai'i. The emigrants who set out to
the marginal areas took with them not only the myths, legends, and
traditions of the central homeland but also a rich supply of food plants and
domestic animals with which to stock their new homes. The later colonists
found some of the islands already occupied by their kinsmen of an earlier
infiltration. Though conflict ensued, time led to a blending of the two.

And so, from Havai'i, the hub of
the Polynesian universe, a more abundant life was carried to the outer isles
by those brave navigators who directed their ships on the course of a star
that led to a safe haven. Others there must have been, as daring and as
trusting in their star, whose course led them into empty seas. Such unlucky
ones sleep9 beneath the barren sea roads they so vainly followed. If the sea
ever gives up its dead, what a parade of Polynesian mariners will wise from
the depths when the call of the shell trumpet summons them to the last
muster roll! Their numbers will bear witness to the courage of those who
dared but failed to reach land which was not there. For them no human songs
were sung, but the sea croons their requiem in a language that they
understand.